In Poetry and Love...

I know, sometimes I use words that I should not
Words that finer poets of today simply would not
Taboo subjects seem to be discarded or ignored
Taboo to whom I wonder; then what is the truth for?
I cannot let my Fear of the mighty Unknown dissuade
my love for you; nor let it undermine the poetry we’ve made
Prime-ministers and presidents and kings are merely men
Their offices and roles relinquished time and time again
Rain washes the earth; as confession does the soul
When I am all alone with you, eternities may roll
For I begin to realize how, in love’s subtle way
Ten-thousand years might easily dissolve in one half-day
In love and poetry for me there are no laws to break
I wish that you were here with me for love and prose’s sake
Yet with this passion I am never really all alone
For you are in my heart, love, and God is on His throne
Prayer does make a difference; if I just let go and trust
Faith small as a mustard seed can reduce rock hills to dust
I cannot see God or the wind, but still I know
They are in the faithful dawn and in the breeze that blows
Taboo excuses faint of heart and weak;
I believe we find the answers if we dare to seek
In poetry and Love we find the Truth
Ah, methinks these well may be the fount of virtual youth
I know, sometimes I use words that I should not
It is hard to tether or control the flow of thought
Love is not a feeling or a thing produced by men
Poetry is not concealed within a lowly pen
I believe in sacred Power from above
And there is really no taboo in poetry or love

Janet Martin

Haunted

The moon hung low outside my north window
Before the deep sky swallowed it up whole
Barring the lucid eye to midnight’s soul
Bustle dies beneath night’s giant shadow

The ragged tree offers no resistance
To breezes tugging at her faded dress
Silence weaves a somber cloak of darkness
Tonight the leaves are too heavy to dance

The stage, weighted with rain and sullen wind
Is perfectly arranged, my dear, for you
Hov’ring like silver threads of frozen dew
Elusive yet so heavy on my mind

The moon hung low outside my north window
The greedy sky snuffs out its valiant spark
I cannot see you for it is too dark
But I feel you shivering in the shadow

J~

Old Man

He sits in his chair by the window,
And watches care-free children at play,
Listening to the sound of their laughter
As in it he is carried away,
Back to the days in his memory,
And oh, its tender music is sweet,
Before silent years when he’s simply
The old man who lives down the street

Once he was that boy on the sidewalk
So full of endless vigor and vim,
Spending happy hours on the ball-field,
Playing until the daylight grew dim,
The laughter drifting through the window
Could well be his friends as they’d meet,
Never dreaming someday he would be
The old man who lives down the street

He studies the faces of young love
Arm in arm they go, strolling by,
And he smiles in wistful reflection
As a teardrop escapes from his eye,
For he too was once a young lover
With many a fair girl at his feet,
And his youthful dreams never pictured
A lonely old man down the street

He sees weary mothers and daddies
With lively dear youngsters in tow,
Their chatter and quarrels and laughter
Are just as they were long ago,
When all of that clamor was heaven,
To be busy and weary was sweet,
Now he rocks, alone in the silence,
An old man who lives down the street

He remembers the hours of working
With a family to feed and to teach,
Bills over-due and dreams waiting
And one always out of his reach,
Mindless of the years as they flew by
Filled up with endless dead-lines to meet,
Too busy to think of an old man
Alone in a house down the street

Now he sits in his chair by the window
And watches people hurrying by,
If you stop you would see him smiling,
But often with a tear in his eye,
For everyone is still so busy
With too many a dead-line to meet,
No time to sit down just to visit
An old man who lives down the street

Janet Martin

Domesticated Bliss

She stares with ill-disguised sympathy
at my work-worn hands fumbling for the right change.
I return her gaze with ease
as meticulously manicured fingers accept politely
two quarters, a dime and three pennies

A labor of love is not drudgery
though, at the glance of a passer-by
it consists of mundane and modest task.
There is more to domestication than meets the eye
offering a wealthy threshold for which I dare not ask

I will not judge you in your platinum halo
your painted eyes and stiletto stance
if you return the same.
How can I tell you that garden-soil is not dirt
and to dig in it is no labor of shame?

…but rather a work of unrequited wonder
as seed sprouts producing fruit and bloom
and beauty; the reward of toil.
Soon earth reclaims its solemn dues
and life returns to soil

Outside these walls of humble bliss
awaits a bombardment of decorated dust,
a ceaseless, bullish quandary
I return to quiet toil in thankfulness
amongst shovels, pots, pans and laundry

Janet

Okay, I confess…
It is with deflated enthusiasm with which I survey
The after-math of a week-end…
But I determine to find within its squalor, bliss!

Yours Forever

http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/
Forgive, shoulder, topples, shallows, bolt, broken, gathered, dancing, drop, burst, causes, feet, hoops.



My thoughts of you like shadow-hoops
Skim o’er the dancing shallows
I feel you warm against my mind
And cold against my shoulder

I gathered once, so tenderly
Your words easily spoken
Dreams topple in futility
As hearts lay sadly broken

To forgive you is easy, love
Forgetting seems unending
I cannot drop like work-worn gloves
The causes I’m defending

The door to you I cannot bolt
Or seal with firm endeavor
My feet may seek unbroken roads
My heart is yours forever

Janet Martin

Sunday Wordle

October's Song

Yellow leaves dive onto the windowsill
Like drunken finches pitching to their rest
They fold in pungent layers ‘gainst the mill
Where rusty patches quilt a sodden nest
Two seasons worth the chill-wind starves and fasts
Its vigor now is urgent; desperate; harsh
It tugs in bullish rage at pristine mast
And lines with gold, the lily-crested marsh
The cattail shivers in its iron wrath
The milk-weed spills to sea, a silky path

Silence threads begging limbs, exposed and bare
Betrayed by tresses, tattered and wind-blown
If glory to the woman is her hair
Then beauty to the tree must be its gown
The lowered sky offers no modest shroud
But rather it enhances her distress
A backdrop dark with tumbled glow’ring cloud
Triumphant in its frigid, blue caress
It paints against the cold horizon-line
A petrified, yet delicate design

The field accepts a shrug of verdant green
The folly of a lush, transient disguise
Short-lived, the comfort of deception’s sheen
Too soon beneath a frozen sheet it lies
Yellow leaves tumble to earth's greedy tomb
Swift, phantom fingers pluck valiant remains
None shall escape its purple-knuckled plume
None can withstand ruthless November rains
As they succumb to death's dark calliope
Waiting for Spring in womb's of quiet hope

Janet Martin

Missing You

Today it is not enough
To know the same rain
Creases our worlds
I long for warm fingers on my back
Sunshine,
The mouth of the sea
Teasing your toes
And mine
I want you more today
In the rain
Its patter amplifying
The pain
Of emptiness where
You used to be
All around me
Before trees swept scarlet tears
Into pictures of
By-gone years
And faded love
The sodden leaves
Losing their chatter,
Dead beneath my feet
It is the end of another summer
Time turns the corner
At the end of the street
It does not see me
Begin to wave good-bye
Stark chimney-flutes
Like giant corn-pipes
Slice the moping sky

J~

Heart Lessons

In youth we desire
To hold and touch
The things so dear to us
But life takes as it gives
Teaching us in its Passing
How to hold in our hearts
What we can no longer hold
In our arms
Teaching us
That we own nothing
And what life gives
Briefly at best
It will re-claim
That love comes in moments
Not a lifetime
That joy is something we choose
Not something that arrives on our doorstep
Like a parcel, special-delivery
A heart is surely stronger than arms
And larger
There is always room
For one more

Janet

There is a sense of loss in the sudden silence
As morning clamor fades gradually,
moving to the end of the driveway
then carried away on a big yellow bus.
Realization leaps from the clutter left behind
and we wash dishes thankfully.
We hold in our hearts those who would have stayed
And those who choose to leave…


Note: Emily, our oldest daughter, drives to school.
Above is the 'clamour' (aka arguing, teasing, debating,)
that moves to the end of the driveway before being carried off on the bus:)
Melissa 17,
Matt 13,
Victoria 10

Good Times!